| Orbital |
| Background information |
| Origin |
Sevenoaks, Kent,
England |
| Genre(s) |
Electronica
House
Techno
Ambient techno |
| Years active |
1989 – 2004 |
| Label(s) |
ffrr
EMI |
| Website |
http://www.loopz.co.uk/ |
| Former members |
Paul
Hartnoll
Phil
Hartnoll |
Orbital was an English techno
duo from 1989 until 2004,
consisting of brothers Paul and Phil
Hartnoll. The name was taken from the raves that occurred in the late 1980s near the M25 orbital motorway
that circles London.
They were initially influenced by early electro
and punk
rock.
|
Contents
- 1 Career
- 1.1 Early
years
- 1.2 1994
breakthrough
- 1.3 Later
albums
- 1.4 Following
the break up
- 2 Political
commentary
- 3 Videos
- 4 Selected
discography
- 4.1 Albums
- 4.2 Singles/EPs
- 4.3 Compilations
- 4.4 Featured
songs
- 5 Notes
- 6 External
links
|
Career
Early years
In 1989,
Orbital recorded a track called Chime on their
father's cassette deck. It was released on Oh Zone Records in December 1989, and re-released
on FFRR
Records a few months later. The track became a rave
anthem, reaching number 17 in the UK charts, and earning them an
appearance on Top of the Pops, during which they
wore anti-Poll
Tax t-shirts. A few singles and EPs followed, and their first self-titled
album, a collection of tracks recorded at various times, was released
in late 1991.
In late 1992 the Radiccio EP barely
reached the UK top forty, but it included probably their most
well-known song, Halcyon.
The song featured a backwards sample of Kirsty
Hawkshaw from It's a Fine Day (a chart
hit for Opus
III earlier that year), and B-side The Naked and
the Dead was similarly based on a line from Scott
Walker's rendition of Jacques Brel's song Next.
Halcyon was dedicated to the Hartnolls' mother, who
was addicted to the tranquiliser Halcion
(Triazolam) for many years.
The duo's popularity grew rapidly with the release of their
second album, titled Orbital 2, in 1993
. The album featured complex arrangements and textures, and opens with
the two minute track Time Becomes, which comprises
nothing but a repeated sample of a Michael Dorn line from Star Trek: The Next
Generation, "...where time becomes a loop". The album reached #28 on
the UK album charts, staying in the top chart for fifteen weeks. Halcyon
was remixed for the album, as Halcyon + On + On.
The first two albums are commonly known as "the green album" and "the
brown album", after the colour of their covers.
1994 breakthrough
Orbital won a NME
award for Vibes Best Dance Act early in 1994, but it was their headline appearance at
the Glastonbury Festival on 25 June 1994 that brought them
most attention. Q magazine classed it as one of the top
50 gigs of all time, and in 2002 included Orbital in their list of 50
Bands to See Before You Die.
Orbital gave an improvisational element to live electronic music as the
brothers mixed and sequenced their tracks on the fly, wearing their
trademark head-mounted flashlights behind banks of equipment (although
Spanish techno performer Chimo Bayo wore head-mounted flashlights
in his shows since 1988,
and in an interview on MTV Spain in 2006 claimed that Orbital started
using the same flashlights after him).
Orbital were one of the few electronic acts invited to play at Woodstock
'94.
The third album Snivilisation
was released in August 1994 . Alison
Goldfrapp provided vocals on a couple of the tracks,
including the single Are We Here?. This track also
included a sample from Man at C&A by The
Specials. Among the remixes of Are We Here?
was Criminal Justice Bill? - four minutes of
silence, a reference to the Criminal
Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which was in part intended to clamp
down on the rave scene which had given birth to Orbital. The other
track with Goldfrapp vocals, Sad But True, was
remixed for the Times Fly EP, the band's only
release in 1995.
The single The Box
was released in April 1996,
reaching #11 in the UK, and its parent album In Sides,
released in May 1996,
became their second top five album. It revealed a less obviously
dance-oriented sound than previously, and had more in common with
soundtrack music. As with the previous album, there was a vague theme
of ecological disaster and dissatisfaction with society. The following
year, the duo contributed to film soundtracks (The
Saint, Event
Horizon) and enjoyed the biggest singles of
their career, with a live version of Satan and
their reworking of the aforementioned The Saint
theme both reaching #3 in the UK.
Later albums
1998
saw a return to the studio to work on their fifth album The Middle of
Nowhere. This was released in 1999, becoming their
third top five album, and was a return to a more upbeat style, with
Alison Goldfrapp returning on vocals, and included the single Style
featuring the stylophone. In 2000 the single Beached
was released from the soundtrack to the film The
Beach, mixing the brothers' musical style with
a melody by Angelo Badalamenti and the words
of Leonardo DiCaprio from the film.
2001's
The Altogether
featured guest vocals by the Hartnolls' brother-in-law David Gray, a
sampled Ian
Dury, and a version of the Doctor Who
theme. It was to be their last album for FFRR, and had a mixed critical
reception. The following year, Work
1989-2002 collected various singles from Chime
onwards.
Orbital split up in 2004 . They played a final series of gigs
from June through July 2004 at the Glastonbury
Festival, the T in the Park Festival in Scotland, the Oxegen festival
(formerly known as Witnness) in Ireland, and the Wire Festival in Japan, concluding
with a live Peel
Session gig at Maida Vale Studios in London on 28 July 2004. The release of their seventh and last
original album, The Blue Album (which, unlike the
untitled previous green and brown albums, was actually named The
Blue Album), coincided with this final wave of shows. The
album featured Sparks (on Acid Pants)
and Lisa
Gerrard (on the final single One Perfect Sunrise).
Following the break up
Paul Hartnoll continues to record music under his own name,
including tracks for the new Wipeout Pure game for
the PSP. He
released his first full length solo album, entitled "The Ideal
Condition" on the ACP record label in June 2007.
Phil Hartnoll formed a new electronica duo, Long
Range, with Nick Smith.
Orbital released a 2 CD/DVD compilation Orbital: Live
at Glastonbury 1994-2004 on 11 June 2007. The collection contains over 2 hours of
music recorded from the group's performances at the festival over the
course of a decade of appearances there.
Political commentary
Orbital sometimes incorporate political and environmental
commentary into their music. The track Forever on Snivilisation
samples a speech by Graham
Crowden from the 1982
Lindsay
Anderson film Britannia Hospital, in which he
lambasts humankind for its destructive ways; and the track You
Lot on the Blue Album,
features a confrontational, partially vocoded anti-genetic
engineering sample from Christopher Eccleston,
originally from the TV two-part series The Second Coming
written by Russell T Davies.
They recorded The Girl With The Sun In Her Head
from In Sides using Greenpeace's
mobile solar power generator CYRUS.
They named an early record Belfast after playing
live in the city of Belfast at the height of The
Troubles in 1990.
Other album track titles suggest environmental concern such as Kein
Trink Wasser ("no drinking water" in German)
from Snivilisaton and Dŵr Budr
("dirty water" in Welsh) and P.E.T.R.O.L.
from In Sides.
Videos
Orbital have put much effort into the videos accompanying
their music. Tilda Swinton starred in the video for
The Box; and they released a DVD version of The
Altogether with a video for every track, with Brian Cant
starring in the track Waving not Drowning.
Selected discography
Albums
- Orbital
(aka the Green Album) (1991) #71 UK
- Orbital
(aka the Brown Album) (May 1993) #28 UK
- Snivilisation (1994) #4 UK
- In Sides (1996) #5 UK
- Event Horizon
(1997) • with
Michael
Kamen #83 UK
- The Middle of
Nowhere (1999) #4 UK, #191 US
- The Altogether
(2001) #11 UK
- Work 1989-2002
(Singles/Rarities Collection) (2002) #36 UK
- Octane (OST)
(October 2003)
- Blue Album
(June 2004)
#44 UK
- Halcyon (Best Of)
(2005)
- Orbital: Live
at Glastonbury 1994-2004 (2007)
Singles/EPs
- Chime (1990) #17 UK
- Omen (1990) #46 UK
- Satan (III EP) (1991) #31 UK
- Midnight/Choice (1991)
- Mutations EP (1992) #24 UK
- Radiccio EP (1992) #37 UK
- Lush (1993) #43 UK
- Peel Session/Diversions (1994)
- Are We Here? (1994) #33 UK
- Belfast/Wasted (1995) #53 UK
- Times Fly (1995)
- The Box (1996) #11 UK
- Satan Live (1996) #3 UK
- The Saint (1997) #3 WK
- Style (1999) #13 UK
- Nothing Left (1999) #32 UK
- Beached (In collaboration with Angelo
Badalamenti) (2000)
#36 UK
- Funny Break (One is Enough) (2001) #21 UK
- Illuminate 12" Only (2001)
- Rest/Play EP (2002) #33 UK
- One Perfect Sunrise/You Lot (2004) #29 UK
Compilations
- The Bedroom Sessions (Various Artists,
selected by Orbital, released with the April 2002 issue of Mixmag.) (2002) UK
- Back to Mine (DJ Mix album)
(2002)
Orbital are sometimes confused with The Orb,
a similarly named band that has also been very influential in the realm
of electronic music. In its early days, The Orb often did remixes of other
artists' songs and called the result an "Orbital Mix", but these
remixes have nothing to do with the band Orbital. The Orb stopped this
practice after Orbital became popular, hoping not to cause any more
confusion.
Featured songs
- Hackers
(1995) • Halcyon + On + On (shortened version) •
used as the film's theme
- Mortal Kombat
(1995) • Halcyon + On + On
- Groove (2000)
• Halcyon + On + On
- CKY2K
(2001) • Halcyon + On + On
- Mean Girls (2004)
• Halcyon + On + On
- Johnny Mnemonic
(1995) • Sad But True
- The Saint (1997) • The
Box
- A Life Less Ordinary
(1997) • The
Box and Dŵr Budr
- Spawn (1997) • Satan
(with Kirk
Hammett)
- π (1998) • P.E.T.R.O.L
- Human Traffic (1999) • Belfast
• Played when the ravers are driving back from the house party
- The Beach
(2000) • Beached
- xXx (2002) • Technologicque
Park (original to this film) • Orbital appear in the film
during the night club/rave sequence
- BBC 40th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who
(2003) • Doctor?
- Keen Eddie •
(original to this programme) score for first episode (2003)
- Wipeout
• various
- Forza Motorsport 2
• Left Behind
- ER (episode: "Insurrection") • Frenetic
Notes
External links
